By JOHN COOK, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, September 24, 2006

DEMOfall, one of the premier launchpads for new technologies, will kick off its two-day conference Tuesday with more than 70 company presentations on the agenda.

Making the trip to San Diego will be three Seattle-area companies that hope to make a splash. (One startup pulled out because its product was not ready.) Here's a peek at what the startups -- Cozi, MyPW and Pluggd -- will be introducing.

Cozi: As a father of three young children, Robbie Cape knows how tough it can be to keep track of the wacky schedules of a growing family. That's why the former Microsoft manager started Cozi, a service whose mission is to "make life easier, less stressful and more fun for busy families." The free service, which requires consumers to download software, combines a family calendar, photo gallery, messaging center and grocery list into one product.

The 15-person company, which earlier this year raised $3.3 million and last week pulled in another $1 million, will compete with established family scheduling services such as AirSet, MyFamily, Fircle and ParentOrganizer.

The company plans to make money through targeted advertisements, with Cape saying that it is in discussions with 35 to 40 companies, some of whom are "among the most popular consumer brands in the world." As an example, he said grocery stores could feature "for sale" products alongside an individual's grocery list or movie studios could promote upcoming DVD releases on the family calendar.

Cape calls the segment "family-ready software," noting that parents often don't have time or energy to use separate photo, calendar or messaging products.

"We don't think that regular people have time to keep family blogs," he said. "It is a lot of work. It is a full-time job."

Cozi, he said, was designed to be highly functional so a laptop-toting father could add items to the grocery list while cooking in the kitchen or a mom could update the family calendar while watching TV. If they are not using the service, the family photo gallery appears as a screen saver. While the majority of people do not use laptops in the kitchen, Cape said that computers are "popping up all over the place" in the house.

However, Cape noted that the company's biggest competition is with people keeping schedules and lists with pen and paper.

In addition to the grocery lists and schedules, Cape said the technology allows family members to broadcast e-mail and text messages to other family members. For example, a mom could access the Cozi site in order to send an e-mail and text message to her children about the cancellation of a sporting event or meeting.

Those who want to access family schedules or lists on the go also can do so by calling an 800 number from their mobile phones. The material is then sent to the phone as a text message.

"Our focus on families is laserlike, and we will not diverge," Cape said.

MyPW: Daryn Nakhuda wants to add another layer of security for computer users who fear that their passwords might get stolen. To do this, the MyPW founder is introducing a small hardware device that generates a random six digit number every 30 seconds. That number is then used to log onto a computer or Web site.

Some established players already are competing in the hardware authentication arena, including RSA Security and CRYPTOcard. But Nakhuda, who came up with his idea as the chief technology officer at Mercer Island-based Spam Arrest, said no one is really going after the consumer market.

Nakhuda also plans to be cheaper than the competition, charging a monthly subscription of $1 per user. That compares with about $80 per unit for RSA, Nakhuda said. Even if the competition's devices last three years, Nakhuda reasons that his pricing is about half the cost.

About 100 Spam Arrest customers have been testing MyPW, with Nakhuda admitting that the biggest challenge will be getting the product into mass distribution.

"It is kind of a chicken and egg problem in some ways of convincing them why they should use our device," Nakhuda said, adding that the price is a big advantage.

MyPW plans to target the banking and health services industries, with Nakhuda saying that it is useful for "anybody who is putting important personal data online."

Pluggd: Seattle-based Pluggd is introducing a service called Hear Here that will allow people to search podcasts for specific audio content. That means someone listening to a 30-minute sports podcast could search for the segments that relate to golf, Tiger Woods or other topics.

Alex Castro, the former Amazon.com and Microsoft manager who founded Pluggd, said the product is smart enough to find "conversations and topics that are conceptually related." If a person is searching for Woods, the portion of the program related to the golfer will appear in red. Those parts of the program that have nothing to do with golf or Woods will appear in blue, he said.

"Consumers are often frustrated by having to listen to content that they are not interested in," said Castro, adding that the search function will be embedded in his company's new audio player.

While some companies use speech recognition to search keywords in podcasts, Castro said his system identifies entire topics. That means listeners could be delivered to the beginning of a topic, rather than being dropped into the middle of a conversation, he said.

The company plans to make money by delivering targeted advertisements to listeners.

"If you can figure out that someone is talking about golf during a section of audio or video, it seems that you could do a pretty good job of targeting ads," he said.